Knowledge resides in teams

The magic of a gelled team is that they know how to work together, and together, they know how to do particular work. The members don’t know how to work together; the team does.

These learnings don’t reside in the members individually, the learnings are in the interrelations.

A shared know-how is jointly constructed between the participants. This shared know-how does not amount to the sum of the individuals’ know-hows nor does it strictly “belong” to any of the participants…. It involves instead the practice of coordinating sensorimotor schemes together, navigating breakdowns, and it belongs to the system the participants bring forth together: the dyad, the group, the family, the community, and so on.

“Linguistic Bodies The Continuity between Life and Language” Ezequiel A. Di
Paolo, Elena Clare Cuffari, and Hanne De Jaegher, quoted by @theblub

If you’re a director who gets to decide which teams stay together and which break apart, you have a lot of power — and very little control. Power can bust up symmathesies, but not build them or repair them. Other levels of hierarchy can set up conditions for success, but teams grow from within.

Leaving a company is scary because we know how to be in that company. Our own knowing-how-to-be exists partly in our interrelations there. Finding a new job means discovering a new way, a new self, to be in the new place. With families, even more so – this is part of what makes divorce so scary. If you’re in an unhealthy system and can’t imagine anything else, this is normal.

When you do get to be part of a healthy team, or a healthy family, appreciate it. Cherish it and nourish it.